HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/04/08 Technologies
November 4, 2008
MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE TECHNOLOGIES BOARD
HELD ON
November 4, 2008
The Regular Session of the TECHNOLOGIES BOARD of The Colony, Texas was called
to order at 6:30 pm on the 4th of November, 2008 at CITY HALL, in the City Managers
Conference Room, City Hall, 6800 MAIN STREET, THE COLONY, TEXAS, with the
following Technologies Board members present:
Chad Joyce
Jack Turner
Bill Swink
Beverly Jones
With four out of seven members present a quorum was established and the following
items were discussed.
11.0 I Call Meeting to Order: 6:31 P.M.
I 2.0 I DISPOSITION OF MINUTES
Acceptance of Technologies Board Minutes for a meeting held on July 8, 2008 with
corrections made.
I 3.0 I CITIZEN INPUT
None
8IJ AGENDA ITEMS
After calling the meeting to order Jack Turner, Chairman, announces that Jacob Leick
submitted a letter of resignation and would no longer be serving on the Technology
Board.
4.1 Consider and approve a recommendation for the purchase of five (5) IBM Blade
Servers.
Bruce Maker, IT Manager for the City of The Colony, eXplained that the IT department is
in the process of consolidating servers. The first two servers will be for City Hall and the
Police Department. There will be six servers consolidated onto these two servers. In the
process they will be removing eight servers that are currently being used. This will
reduce power consumption. Bill Swink asked if the Blade servers were Dual-Core. Mr.
Maker said they are all Quad-Core. Mr. Maker eXplained that these are the servers to go
in the Blade Chassis that was previously approved. Mr. Maker explained the servers are
upgradable to 32Mb of memory if needed. Mr. Turner asked if Mr. Maker will be getting
bids for these. Mr. Maker said they are currently out for bid. Mr. Swink made a motion to
November 4, 2008
approve the recommendation to purchase five blade servers. Mr. Jones seconded the
motion. Motion carries.
4.2 Consider and approve a recommendation for the purchase of five (5) additional
VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise software licenses.
Mr. Maker explained that this software will be installed on the blades and allow them to
install multiple servers on one piece of hardware. He explained that Enterprise will give
them the capability to use the virtual center which allows them to install the VMWare on
a single storage unit for data recovery purposes. Mr. Joyce asked how many different
operating systems Mr. Maker is planning to host. Mr. Maker said it will vary depending
on what they are using the server for. Mr. Joyce asked if the operating systems will be
Microsoft. Mr. Maker said they will be. Mr. Swink made a motion to approve a
recommendation for the purchase of the VMWare licenses. Ms. Jones seconded the
motion. Motion carries.
4.3 Consider and approve a recommendation to purchase two (2) Cisco 3560
switches.
Mr. Maker explained that the switches will be used for the Recreation Center and the
Community Center. They will allow for VLAN at the Community Center and prevent the
public computers from being able to access the city network. Mr. Maker said the
Community Center wants to install wireless access points and he has not been able to
recommend that due to security issues. If we install these switches we can solve that
problem. Mr. Joyce asked if the wireless access will stay on the public side. Mr. Maker
said it would. Mr. Joyce asked if these switches are in the budget. Mr. Maker said it is.
He eXplained that this would also allow the Animal Control building to be on the network
at the Police Department. Mr. Joyce made a motion to approve a recommendation for the
purchase of two switches. Mr. Swink made a second. Motion carries.
4.4 Discuss building a new Microsoft Windows Active Directory Forest along with
two Domains and migrate the current City infrastructure.
Mr. Maker eXplained the directory structure of the City. He explained that he would like
to use two IBM Blade servers and creating a non-transitive trust between what exists now
and the new environment. Once that is up and running he will use one more Blade server
to install exchange 2007. The IT department is experiencing issues with ghost servers in
the current version of exchange 2003. Mr. Joyce asked if Mr. Maker will be bringing a
more detailed proposal to the board in the future. Mr. Maker said he will not be doing
that. Mr. Joyce said he would be interested in seeing the entire project. Mr. Maker said he
could present it to the board. Mr. Swink asked why we have this current problem. Mr.
Maker explained that in the past each department was consulting out their IT needs and
we have pieced things together. We are now in the process of trying to make it a better
solution. Ms. Jones made a motion to approve a recommendation to build a Windows
Active Directory Forest. Mr. Joyce seconded the motion. Motion carries.
2
November 4, 2008
[I!CJ ADJOURNMENT
With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 6:52 p.m.
APPROVED:
~ '
'7
. ,/ ",
, :y:-; , ~____--e-
Andre~ Turner, Chairman
/)
/!
p/ /?/' ~tJ/
~~;::11{14,
Mark Porter, Secretary
3